BEN
GOYMOUR
Ben Goymour is a self taught artist whose route into art was anything but conventional.
Born in Peterborough in 1985, Ben joined the British Army at sixteen and went on to serve with 29 Commando Regiment Royal Artillery. His early adult life was shaped by military service around the world including USA, Arctic training in Norway, and deployment to Afghanistan as a young Section Commander at the age of 20.
ART CAME MUCH LATER
In 2017, following a hiking trip to the Lake District, Ben was inspired to pick up a paintbrush for the first time. Living with PTSD following his military service, he discovered that painting gave him something he had struggled to find elsewhere: focus, stillness and a way of quietening the noise.
What began as an attempt to recreate the feeling of being in the landscape quickly became something far more significant. He taught himself through constant practice and experimentation, eventually leaving his previous career behind to become a full time artist in 2021.“His early career was built around landscape and seascape painting, with work exhibited through galleries across the UK and entering private collections in Britain and internationally.
Afghanistan, Herrick 5. 2006 - Age 20, Section Commander.
BUT THE WORK CONTINUED TO EVOLVE
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Increasingly, Ben found himself drawn beyond landscape towards subjects chosen not simply for how they looked, but for the stories, ideas and meaning they carried. People have become an important part of that progression, opening new ways of exploring character, vulnerability, strength, memory and perception.
Ben’s practice now spans modern portrait painting, drawing and mixed media, with the human figure becoming an important part of his work as a portrait artist and figurative artist. Selected works are available to buy online, giving collectors the opportunity to buy original art directly from the studio.
His recent work also represents a return to drawing and the foundations of image making. Charcoal, graphite and works on paper now sit alongside larger paintings, with areas often left raw or unresolved and evidence of the process deliberately retained rather than concealed.
Working across painting, drawing and mixed media, Ben allows the subject and the idea behind it to determine how each work develops rather than restricting his practice to a single genre.
For Ben, this evolution is not a rejection of the work that came before it, but a consequence of it.